Monday, 17 June 2013

You can't make people see the truth

It is impossible to make someone agree with a positive truth claim. If the definition of a truth claim is that two things are equivalent... then we cannot 'make' someone believe that two things are equivalent. They must come to their own conclusion. Which makes it difficult for a team of prosecution lawyers to make their case since the jury will initially be inclined to assume innocence. The evidence must be very compelling before they will be willing to reach a guilty verdict. The reason this is so difficult is that if a person has not seen the truth of a claim then you will need to bring new evidence... and if the claim is political then it will not be easy to bring new evidence to the audience since they are living in the same political environment as you are. Our only hope as far as convincing people of political truths is concerned is that eventually the truth will become too significant to ignore or that people will seek the truth (political change) on their own. If people do not agree with you about political truths it will be very difficult to convince them... in fact it is close to impossible in which case it is an endeavour best avoided. If people cannot see the same political truths that you can it is perhaps best not to even try to convince them. It is almost impossible to make people see political truths so it is stupid to (seek to) impose them on people. Let them find the truth for themselves. You cannot make people see political truths. Political truths cannot be imposed on the people.

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